“I AM determined to satisfy my—call it curiosity if you will—in regard
to this fox-woman,” the Tojin-san told the three students who were his
almost constant companions outside the school.
“I can get no help whatever from my servants and less from the guard.
Genji Negato is worse than a woman, and the Daimio’s officer has point
blank refused to give me a guide to direct me to her home on Atago
Yama.”
He paused and looked at the embarrassed faces of the students. They were
devoted to him he knew, eager to serve and please him; yet even they,
sons of the new, sane Japan, feared the fox-woman. He was determined to
win them over.
“So I want your help, Junzo, and yours, and yours, Nunuki and Higo. You
can help me if you will.”
“In what way?” demanded Nunuki cautiously.
“In any way you wish. Devise some scheme to trap this creature of the
mountains.”
“Can we trap the north wind when it raves over the wilderness? Can we
trap even the gentlest zephyr when it dances across sunlit paths?” asked
Junzo, wistfully.
“But the fox-woman is neither the rough north wind, nor the playful
zephyr of the south. She has a physical body, which even you will admit.
The wildest thing of the wildest forest can be caught,” and he added,
half under his breath, “and tamed.”
Higo was considering, his young patrician face very thoughtful and
intent; but Junzo with a burst of boyish pity put his hand timidly,
affectionately into that of the Tojin’s.
“Ah, dear sensei,” he said, “you are tortured, obsessed by this wretched
witch. She has put her evil spell upon you.”
“Nonsense,” said his teacher, almost roughly, releasing his hand. “This
is not helping me, Junzo.”
“But you have never heard the story of Chuguro. It happened in Yedo,
many years ago, your excellency. He was in the service of a Hatamoto
named Suzuki, and seemed like any other contented and healthy ashigaru.
Then came a time when his comrades missed him in the night, and they
would not again see him till just before the dawn, when he would creep
back to his quarters looking very strange and white and exhausted. He
became weaker and weaker from day to day, and at last was unable to
leave his couch at all, though he pleaded and begged to be carried to
the foot of a little bridge not far from the main gateway. But his
friends were obdurate. They called in a great Chinese surgeon, who made
an examination of the dying man and declared his veins had been
literally drained dry of blood! All declared it was the fox-woman; but
the Chinese doctor said: ‘It was a frog, which took to the soldier’s
eyes the form of a woman.’” The boy paused, eying his teacher wistfully.
“It is only a legend you will say, sensei, but I beseech thee, honored
sir, to avoid contact with even a stray fly, a spider, any crawling
thing that may beat its way into your yashiki. Who knows what form this
dreadful fox-woman may take to lure you.”
Higo broke in impatiently:
“If indeed our sensei is tortured, why waste words on idle tales of the
past? It is our duty to conceive some sensible scheme by which to rid
his excellency of the torture.”
He began to talk swiftly and eagerly to his friends in Japanese, and
gradually their resisting and doubting faces changed. With boy-like zeal
they discussed the adventure proposed by Higo. Then the latter turned
abruptly back to the Tojin-san.
“You will permit us free access to your grounds at all and any hours?”
“Most certainly. I will so instruct the gateman.”
“And, if necessary, we may call upon the guard for assistance?”
The Tojin-san slightly smiled.
“Come now, surely you don’t anticipate so hard a task?”
“We cannot tell. Even the guard may prove insufficient, but with Shaka’s
aid we may succeed!”
A look of alarm came to the Tojin-san’s face.
“I wish no harm whatever to befall her. If you can surprise her upon one
of her nightly peregrinations in our neighborhood, and induce her gently
but firmly to accompany you, it will be gratifying. Once brought face to
face with other people—for I am convinced she is the same as we are—I
hope to be able to lay this bugaboo of a fox-woman.”
“As for that, impossible to say,” said Higo vaguely. “Now sinking, now
floating, thus is life says the poet. If disaster befall us in the
undertaking it will be as decreed of the gods. All things are beforehand
ordained.”
“You anticipate hazard in the adventure?”
“We would not attempt it otherwise,” proudly asserted Nunuki, his hand
unconsciously caressing his sword-hilt, for these boy-samourai all wore
the sword. Higo indeed was of a princely house, and kin to Echizen
himself.
As the American looked at them, nerving themselves thus bravely for an
encounter which to them at least was a deadly one, he suddenly thought
of that frail, fleeing shadow which had gone before him in the gloom of
the unlighted halls, and, unconsciously, he smiled. Why, boys as they
were, any one of them could surely have crushed her between the palms of
his sinewy young hands. If there were a real risk to run, he knew he
would be the first to thrust himself in their way. But no! The
undertaking was worth while, necessary, indeed, if only for the purpose
of demonstrating the foolishness and cruelty of superstition. Even the
melancholy tones of his favorite pupil, chanting almost monotonously the
Buddhist text:
“Brief is the time of pleasure, and quickly turns to pain, and
whatsoever is born must necessarily die,” failed to move him.
Young heroic fatalists! His heart went out to them overwhelmingly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
X
THEY had dug a trench hard by the castle moat. Over this they spread a
net made of stout hempen rope, the edges of which were threaded in and
out with elastic of great strength. This was stretched out and pinned,
not too firmly, till it encircled and covered the pit. Then the sod and
leaves and flower petals were carefully, though thinly, replaced, and
the trap was ready for the Fox-Woman of Atago Yama.
Over all the Matsuhaira Shiro a tense, silent excitement pervaded.
Though the students had worked in secret, swiftly and silently on a
dusky, rainy night, when their prey would not be likely to be abroad,
nevertheless no smallest menial on the place but knew that measures had
been taken to entrap the fox-woman. They shivered deliciously over the
dreadful prospect, for dire things had been promised them by the too
garrulous Genji Negato, should any slightest inkling of the plans leak
out from the Shiro itself.
Even the Tojin-san, who had been kept in complete ignorance of the
actual methods they had taken to entrap her, was affected by that
nameless feeling of uneasiness and unquiet, of repressed excitement and
strained fear, which animated every other individual of his household.
Throughout the evening he paced his great chamber in a moody, wretched
silence. The sense of aloneness, of homesickness that sometimes came
upon him in this land, seemed somehow this night to be deeper, more
depressing. For days, indeed, he had been affected by a feeling of
impending gloom and disaster. He had been restless, dissatisfied,
nervous—unconsciously listening and waiting for something he seemed to
expect was about to happen. Now he found himself analyzing this sick
sense of depression which had pervaded his whole being these latter
days, and seemed to reach its culmination on this silent night.
Was it something in the look or tone of a student who recalled one of
his own people, or was it the letters that had come to him from across
the seas that made him realize they had cared for him more in that other
country than he had realized? No—he faced the situation. This was not
what had awakened the fever within him.
It was something deeper, something very beautiful and mystic. It was the
golden hair of this Japanese Lorelei which had ensnared his longing! He
could not banish its glitter, its “sun” as they called it here, its wild
appeal from his mind. What was this creature of the mountains then, whom
the gentlest of people had outcast? And what was this spell they said
she had cast upon him? The words seized upon his fancy, writhed his lips
into a tortured smile. He, whom a mere woman had scorned, under the
spell of a witch—a wild creature of these Japanese mountains whose face
he had never even seen! It was preposterous—fantastic! And yet!
The blood forsook his face, his lips. For days, for weeks, aye, for
months he had thought of little else. Through half the luminous nights
he had watched and waited for her—had sought her desperately, hungrily.
Day and night he had been waiting for her—waiting and listening, always
listening, for that appealing voice of mockery and anguish that called
to him insistently—to him alone! What mad fancies were these that had
woven themselves like a subtle spider’s web into his clear, sane mind?
It was the country, the people! He was in a land of gods and spirits!
The night was very still and humid. The rain was gone, but its wet touch
still clung in the air and was moist upon the grass and trees. The shoji
of the chamber had been removed entirely on the garden side, so that he
practically was out-of-doors in an open pavilion or verandah. He could
see the moon-tipped branches of the trees under whose shade myriad
fireflies flickered in and out, rivalling the distant stars above them
in brilliancy.
A cherry grove, from which blew fairy flakes, like confetti at a
carnival, was at the extremity of the garden, and ever and anon a shower
of these dancing-petals blew into his apartment, giving it an almost
festive air. Great drifts of them lay in the corners of the room, like
snow, and upon his couch, his tables, chairs and other furnishings,
marking them with a white touch. In the shadow of a bamboo grove an
uguisu thrilled forth its liquid song, and the wind-bells on the eaves
tinkled musically back and forth in a faint breeze, as if in unison with
the song of the wood-bird.
From across the mountains came the gentle booming of the temple bells,
telling the hour of the night, and, as if they were a signal listened
for, the fox-woman crept out of the dense bamboo grove and felt her way
among the shadows till she came to the brink of the castle moat. Along
its edge she wended her fleet, cautious way, till she came to a narrow
wing, and over this she stepped silently. In the vague light of the
moon, she seemed indeed a wraith, in her clinging gown of white,
enshrouded in the wild veil of her hair. On and on she moved, as though
she travelled over known and familiar paths.
Suddenly, piercingly, in the still moonlight sounded the cry of the
fox-woman, and, as suddenly, a silence fell, still as death itself. It
was as if every living thing had paused to listen to that appealing cry
of agony and terror.
Silence! No one stirring. No one breathing.
Then, as if brought violently into life, the Tojin-san bounded to his
feet, and in the light of the swinging takahiras, for a moment his great
form loomed up menacingly. From all parts of the estate now came the
sound of movement, and he saw the samourai guard, their gleaming swords
drawn fully and flashing eerily in the moonlight, charge down blindly in
the direction of the cry. Within the woods came the sound of battle, the
rumble of men’s savage, triumphant voices—a wild stirring and crying,
and then again—the silence!
Presently from out the brush they came, bearing their burden—stalwart
men of war, all with their hands upon her. Out along the whitewashed
paths, across the green-clipped lawns and through the garden of
fragrant, blowing flowers they carried the fox-woman into the
cherry-petalled chamber of the Tojin-san. There they set her down, still
entangled, like a wild beast of the woods, in the net they had made to
snare her.
Unmoving she lay, as one indeed in whom life was extinct; but when the
Tojin-san moved with an impulse of passionate yearning toward her, the
boy Junzo, who loved him, sprang in his path.
“Touch her not, beloved sensei! She is accursed, unclean!”
[Illustration:
“TOUCH HER NOT, BELOVED SENSEI!
SHE IS ACCURSED, UNCLEAN!”]
He put the boy roughly, savagely aside, and in a moment was kneeling
above her. It was the task of a minute to cut free the bonds that bound
her. Still she did not move. With hands that trembled in spite of
themselves, gently, softly, he put back from her face the glittering
veil of her hair, and as he did so his heart came up in his throat in a
great, suffocating bound—for the face he uncovered was that of a white
woman!
So perfect, so exquisite the small, sensitive face, he could only gaze
upon it spell-bound. The great purple eyes, wide open, and shadowed with
their long, gilded lashes; the thin little nose; the lips red as a new
blown rose, and as sweet!—and crowning it all, the golden glory of her
hair.
In this land where only the brown face and densely black hair and eyes
had been known for centuries, was it strange that this creature of the
mountains seemed as of another world—a sprite indeed. This persecuted,
hunted creature, whom they had trapped with ropes, as the hunter does
the wild animals of the forests; this fragile, trembling, quivering
little child—of his own skin and blood—_this_ was the fox-woman!
She spoke not at all, though her wide-open eyes never moved from the
Tojin’s face. Something in their glassy stare, their curious look as of
a mist before them, brought an exclamation to his lips. He bent nearer
to her, looked deeply, keenly into those unflickering eyes, and an
imprecation swept his lips.
“And blind! My God!” he cried.
As if his voice had moved her spirit into a sudden life, the fox-woman
stirred soundlessly as a cat would have done. Suddenly she leaped
blindly in the face of the Tojin. He stood unmoving, a great stolid wall
against which she might hurl her puny strength in vain.
Presently, gasping, exhausted, she drew backward, her fluttering hands
crushed upon her heart as if to stop its frantic beating. A sound that
had the vaguest, most piteous of human notes came from the fox-woman’s
lips, and suddenly, with the motion of a lost child in despair, she
buried her face in the fragile shelter of her hands.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------